THE POT OF TULIPS.

by Fitz-James O'Brien
(1826-1862)

TWENTY-EIGHT years ago I went to spend the summer at an old Dutch villa which then lifted its head from the wild country that, in present days, has been tamed down into a site for a Crystal Palace. Madison Square was then a wilderness of fields and scrub oak, here and there diversified with some tall and stately elm. Worthy citizens who could afford two establishments rusticated in the groves that then flourished where ranks of brown-stone porticoes now form the landscape; and the locality of Fortieth Street, where my summer palace stood, was justly looked upon as at an enterprising distance from the city.

      I had an imperious desire to live in this house ever since I can remember. I had often seen it when a boy, and its cool verandas and quaint garden seemed, whenever I passed, to attract me irresistibly. In after years, when I grew up to man's estate, I was not sorry, therefore, when one summer, fatigued with the labors of my business, I beheld a notice in the papers intimating that it was to be let furnished. I hastened to my dear friend, Jasper Joye, painted the delights of this rural retreat in the most glowing colors, easily obtained his assent to share the enjoyments and the expense with me, and in a month afterward we were taking our ease in this new paradise. Independent of early associations other interests attached me to this house. It was somewhat historical, and had given shelter to George Washington on the occasion of one of his visits to the city. Furthermore, I knew the descendants of the family to whom it had originally belonged. Their history was strange and mournful, and it seemed to me as if their individuality was somehow shared by the edifice. It had been built by a Mr. Van Koeren, a gentleman of Holland, the younger son of a rich mercantile firm in the Hague, who had emigrated to this country in order to establish a branch of his father's business in New York, which even then gave indications of the prosperity it has since reached with such marvelous rapidity. He had brought with him a fair young Belgian wife; a loving girl — if I may believe her portrait — with soft brown eyes, chestnut hair, and a deep, placid contentment spreading over her fresh and innocent features. Her son, Alain Van Koeren, had her picture — an old miniature in a red gold frame — as well as that of his father; and in truth, when looking on the two, one could not conceive a greater contrast than must have existed between husband and wife. Mr. Van Koeren must have been a man of terrible will and gloomy temperament. His face — in the picture — is dark and austere, his eyes deep-sunken, and burning as if with a slow, inward fire. The lips are thin and compressed, with much determination of purpose; and his chin, boldly salient, is brimful of power and resolution. When first I saw those two pictures I sighed inwardly, and thought, "Poor child! you must often have sighed for the sunny meadows of Brussels, in the long gloomy nights spent in the company of that terrible man!"

      I was not far wrong, as I afterward discovered. Mr. and Mrs. Van Koeren were very unhappy. Jealousy was his monomania, and he had scarcely been married before his girl-wife began to feel the oppression of a gloomy and ceaseless tyranny. Every man under fifty, whose hair was not white and whose form was erect, was an object of suspicion to this Dutch Bluebeard. Not that he was vulgarly jealous. He did not frown at his wife before strangers, or attack her with reproaches in the midst of her festivities. He was too well-bred a man to bare his private woes to the world. But at night, when the guests had departed and the dull light of the quaint old Flemish lamps but half-illuminated the nuptial chamber, then it was that with monotonous invective Mr. Van Koeren crushed his wife. And Marie, weeping and silent, would sit on the edge of the bed listening to the cold trenchant irony of her husband, who, pacing up and down the room, would now and then stop in his walk to gaze with his burning eyes upon the pallid face of his victim. Even the evidences that Marie gave of becoming a mother did not check him. He saw in that coming event that most husbands anticipate with mingled joy and fear, only an approaching incarnation of his dishonor. He watched with a horrible refinement of suspicion for the arrival of that being in whose features he madly believed he would but too surely trace the evidences of his wife's crime.

      Whether it was that these ceaseless attacks wore out her strength, or that Providence wished to add another chastening misery to her burden of woe, I dare not speculate; but it is certain that one luckless night Mr. Van Koeren learned with fury that he had become a father two months before the allotted time. During his first paroxysm of rage on the receipt of intelligence which seemed to confirm all his previous suspicions, it was, I believe, with difficulty that he was prevented from slaying both the innocent causes of his resentment. The caution of his race and the presence of the physicians induced him, however, to put a curb upon his furious will until reflection suggested quite as criminal, if not as dangerous a vengeance. As soon as his poor wife had recovered from her illness, unnaturally prolonged by the delicacy of constitution induced by previous mental suffering, she was astonished to find, instead of increasing his persecutions, that her husband had changed his tactics and treated her with studied neglect. He rarely spoke to her except on occasions when the decencies of society demanded that he should address her. He avoided her presence, and no longer inhabited the same apartment. He seemed, in short, to strive as much as possible to forget her existence. But if she did not suffer from personal ill-treatment it was because a punishment more acute was in store for her. If Mr. Van Koeren had chosen to affect to consider her beneath his vengeance, it was because his hate had taken another direction, and seemed to have derived increased intensity from the alteration. It was upon the unhappy boy, the cause of all this misery, that the father lavished a terrible hatred. Mr. Van Koeren seemed determined, that if this child sprang from other loins than his, that the mournful destiny which he forced upon him would amply avenge his own existence and the infidelity of his mother. While the child was an infant his plan seemed to have been formed. Ignorance and neglect were the two deadly influences with which he sought to assassinate the moral nature of this boy; and his terrible campaign against the virtue of his own son, was, as he grew up, carried into execution with the most consummate generalship. He gave him money, but debarred him from education. He allowed him liberty of action, but withheld advice. It was in vain that his mother, who foresaw the frightful consequences of such a training, sought in secret by every means in her power to nullify her husband's attempts. She strove in vain to seduce her son into an ambition to be educated. She beheld with horror all her agonized efforts frustrated, and saw her son, and only child, becoming, even in his youth, a drunkard and a libertine. In the end it proved too much for her strength; she sickened, and went home to her sunny Belgian plains. There she lingered for a few months in a calm but rapid decay, whose calmness was broken but by the one grief; until one autumn day, when the leaves were falling from the limes, she made a little prayer for her son to the Good God, and died. Vain orison! Spendthrift, gamester, libertine, and drunkard by turns, Alain Van Koeren's earthly destiny was unchangeable, The father, who should have been his guide, looked on each fresh depravity of his son's with a species of grim delight. Even the death of his wronged wife had no effect upon his fatal purpose. He still permitted the young man to run blindly to destruction by the course into which he himself had led him.

      As years rolled by, and Mr. Van Koeren himself approached to that time of life when he might soon expect to follow his persecuted wife, he relieved himself of the hateful presence of his son altogether. Even the link of a systematic vengeance, which had hitherto united them, was severed, and Alain was cast adrift without either money or principle. The occasion of this final separation between father and son was the marriage of the latter with a girl of humble, though honest extraction. This was a good excuse for the remorseless Van Koeren, so he availed himself of it by turning his son out of doors. From that time forth they never met. Alain lived a life of meagre dissipation, and soon died, leaving behind him one child, a daughter. By a coincidence natural enough, Mr. Van Koeren's death followed his son's almost immediately. He died as he had lived, sternly. But those who were around his couch in his last moments, mentioned some singular facts connected with the manner of his death. A few moments before he expired he raised himself in the bed, and seemed as if conversing with some person invisible to the spectators. His lips moved as if in speech, and immediately afterward he sank back, bathed in a flood of tears. "Wrong! wrong!" he was heard to mutter, feebly; then he implored passionately the forgiveness of some one who he said was present. The death struggle ensued almost immediately, and in the midst of his agony he seemed wrestling for speech. All that could be heard, however, were a few broken words. "I was wrong. My — unfounded —   For God's sake look in —   You will find —" Having uttered these fragmentary sentences, he seemed to feel that the power of speech had passed away forever. He fixed his eyes piteously on those around him, and, with a great sigh of grief, expired. I gathered these facts from his grand-daughter, and Alain's daughter, Alice Van Koeren, who had been summoned by some friend to her grandfather's dying couch when it was too late. It was the first time she had seen him, and then she saw him die.

      The results of Mr. Van Koeren's death were nine days wonder to all the merchants in New York. Beyond a small sum in the bank, and the house in which he lived, which was mortgaged for its full value, Mr. Van Koeren had died a pauper! To those who knew him, and knew his affairs, this seemed inexplicable. Five or six years before his death he had retired from business with a fortune of over a hundred thousand dollars. He had lived quietly since then; was known not to have speculated, and could not have gambled. The question then was, where had his wealth vanished to? Search was made in every secretary, in every bureau, for some document which might throw a light on the mysterious distribution that he had made of his property. None were found. Neither will, nor certificates of stock, nor title deeds, nor bank accounts, were any where discernible. Inquiries were made at the offices of companies in which Mr. Van Koeren was known to be largely interested; he had sold out his stock years ago. Real estate that had been believed to be his, was found, on investigation, to have passed into other hands. There could be no doubt but that for some years past Mr. Van Koeren had been steadily converting all his immense property into money, and what he had done with that money no one knew. Alice Van Koeren and her mother, who at the old gentleman's death were at first looked on as millionaires, discovered, when all was over, that they were no better off than before. It was evident that the old man, determined that one who, though bearing his name, he believed not to be of his blood, should never inherit his wealth, or any share of it, had made away with his fortune before his death — a posthumous vengeance, which was the only one by which the laws of the State of New York, relative to inheritance, could be successfully evaded.

      I took a peculiar interest in the case, and even helped to make some researches after the lost property, not so much, I confess, from a spirit of general philanthropy, as from certain feelings which I experienced toward Alice Van Koeren, the heir to this invisible estate. I had long known both her and her mother when they were living in an honest poverty, and earning a scanty subsistence by their own labor; Mrs. Van Koeren working as an embroideress, and Alice turning to account, as a preparatory governess, the education which her good mother, spite of her limited means, had bestowed on her.

      In a few words, then, I loved Alice Van Koeren, and was determined to make her my wife, as soon as my means would allow me to support a fitting establishment. My passion had never been declared. I was content for the time with the secret consciousness of my own love, and the no less grateful certainty that Alice returned it, all unuttered as it was. I had, therefore, a double interest in passing the summer at the old Dutch villa, for I felt it to be connected somehow with Alice, and I could not forget the singular desire to inhabit it which I had so often experienced as a boy.

      It was a lovely day in June when Jasper Joye and myself took up our abode in our new residence, and as we smoked our cigars on the piazza in the evening, we felt, for the first time, the unalloyed pleasure with which a townsman breathes the pure air of the country.

      The house and grounds had a quaint sort of beauty that to me were eminently pleasing. Landscape gardening, in the modern acceptation of the term, was then almost unknown in this country, and the "laying out" of the garden that surrounded our new home would doubtless have shocked Mr. Loudon, the late Mr. Downing, or Sir Thomas Dick Lauder. It was formal and artificial to the last degree. The beds were cut into long parallelograms, rigid and severe of aspect, and edged with prim rows of stiff, dwarf box. The walks, of course, crossed always at right angles, and the laurel and cypress trees that grew here and there were clipped into cones, and spheres, and rhomboids. It is true, that at the time my friend and I hired the house some years of neglect had restored to this formal garden somewhat of the raggedness of nature. The box edgings were rank and wild. The clipped trees, forgetful of geometric propriety, flourished off into unauthorized boughs and rebel offshoots. The walks were green with moss, and the beds of Dutch tulips, which had been planted in the shape of certain gorgeous birds, whose colors were represented by masses of blossoms, each of a single hue, had transgressed their limits, and the purple of a parrot's wings might have been seen running recklessly into the crimson of his head; while as bulbs, however well-bred, will create other bulbs, the flower-birds of this queer old Dutch garden became in time abominably distorted in shape. Flamingoes with humps; golden pheasants with legs preternaturally elongated; macaws afflicted with an attack of hydrocephalus, each species of deformity being proportioned to the rapidity with which the roots had spread in some particular direction. Still, this strange mixture of raggedness and formality — this conglomerate of nature and art, had its charms. It was pleasant to watch the struggle, as it were, between the opposing elements, and to see nature triumphing by degrees in every direction.

      Then the house itself was pleasant and commodious. Rooms that, though not lofty, were spacious. Wide windows and cool piazzas extending over the four sides of the building; and a collection of quaint old carved furniture, some of which, from its elaborateness, might well have come from the chisel of Master Grinling Gibbons. There was a mantle-piece in the dining-room with which I remember being very much struck when first I came to take possession. It was a most singular and fantastical piece of carving. It was a perfect tropical garden, menagerie, and aviary in one. Birds, beasts, and flowers were sculptured on the wood with exquisite correctness of detail, and painted with the hues of nature. The Dutch taste for color was here fully gratified. Parrots, love-birds, scarlet lorys, blue-faced baboons, crocodiles, passion-flowers, tigers, Egyptian lilies, and Brazilian butterflies, were all mixed up in the most gorgeous confusion. The artist, whoever he was, must have been an admirable naturalist, for the case and freedom of his carving was only equaled by the wonderful accuracy with which the different animals were represented. Altogether it was one of those oddities of Dutch conception whose strangeness was, in this instance, redeemed by the excellence of the execution.

      Such was the establishment that Jasper Joye and myself were to inhabit for the summer months.

      "What a strange thing it was," said Jasper, as we lounged on the piazza together the night of our arrival, "that old Van Koeren's property should never have turned up!"

      "It is a question with some people whether he had any at his death," I answered.

      "Pshaw! every one knows that he did not or could not have lost that with which he retired from business."

      "It is strange," said I thoughtfully; "yet every possible search has been made for any documents that might throw some light on the mystery. I have myself sought in every quarter for the traces of this lost wealth, but in vain."

      "Perhaps he buried it?" suggested Jasper, laughing; "if so, we may find it here in some hole one fine morning."

      "I think it much more likely that he destroyed it," I replied. "You know he never could be got to believe that Alain Van Koeren was his son, and I believe him quite capable of having flung all his money into the sea, in order to prevent those whom he considered not of his blood inheriting it, which they must have done under our laws."

      "I am sorry that Alice did not become an heiress, both for your sake and hers. She is a charming girl."

      Jasper, from whom I concealed nothing, knew of my love.

      "As to that," I answered, "it is little matter. I shall in a year or two be independent enough to marry, and can afford to let Mr. Van Koeren's cherished gold sleep wherever he has concealed it."

      "Well, I'm off to bed," said Jasper, yawning. "This country air makes one sleepy early. Be on the look-out for trap-doors and all that sort of thing, old fellow. Who knows but the old chap's dollars will turn up. Good-night!"

      "Good-night, Jasper!"

      So we parted for the night. He to his room, which lay on the west side of the building, I to mine on the east, situated at the end of a long corridor, and exactly opposite to Jasper's. The night was very still and warm. The clearness with which I heard the song of the katydid, and the croak of the bull-frog, seemed to make the silence more distinct. The air was dense and breathless, and although longing to throw wide my windows, I dared not, for without the ominous trumpetings of a whole army of mosquitoes sounded threateningly.

      I tossed on my bed oppressed with the heat; kicked the blankets into every spot where they ought not to be; gradually got the sheets twisted into a rope; turned my pillow every two minutes in the hope of finding a cool side; in short, did every thing that a man does when he lies awake on a very hot night, and can not open his window.

      Suddenly, in the midst of my miseries, and when I had made up my mind to fling open the casement in spite of the legion of mosquitoes that I knew were hungrily waiting outside, suddenly I felt a continuous stream of cold air blowing upon my face. Luxurious as the sensation was, I could not help starting as I felt it. Where could this draught come from? The door was closed — so were the windows. It did not come from the direction of the fire-place; and even if it did, the air without was too still to produce so strong a current. I got up in my bed and gazed round the room, the whole of which, though only lit by a dim twilight, was still sufficiently visible. I thought at first it was a trick of Jasper's, who might have provided himself with a bellows or a long tube; but a careful investigation of the apartment convinced me that no one was there. Besides, I had locked the door, and it was not likely that any one had been concealed in the room before I entered it. It was exceedingly strange; but still the draught of cool wind blew on my face and chest, every now and then changing its direction — sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other. I am not constitutionally nervous, and had been too long accustomed to reflect on philosophical subjects to become the prey of fear in the presence of mysterious phenomena. I had devoted much of my leisure time to the investigation of what are popularly called supernatural matters by those who have not reflected or examined sufficiently to discover that none of these apparent miracles are supernatural, but all, however singular, directly dependent on certain natural laws. I became speedily convinced therefore, as I sat up in my bed peering into the dim recesses of my chamber, that this mysterious wind was the effect or forerunner of a supernatural visitation, and I mentally determined to investigate it as it developed itself with a philosophical calmness.

      "Is any one in this room?" I asked, as distinctly as I could. No reply; while the cool wind still swept over my cheek. I knew, in the case of Elizabeth Eslinger, who was visited by an apparition while in the Weinsberg jail, and whose singular and apparently authentic experiences were made the subject of a book by Dr. Kerner, that the manifestation of the spirit was invariably accompanied by such a breezy sensation as I now experienced. I therefore gathered my will, as it were, into a focus, and endeavored, as much as lay in my power, to put myself en rapport with the disembodied spirit, if such there was, knowing that on such conditions alone would it be enabled to manifest itself to me.

      Presently it seemed to me as if a luminous cloud was gathering in one corner of the room — a sort of dim phosphoric vapor, shadowy and ill-defined. It changed its position frequently, sometimes coming nearer, and at others retreating to the farthest end of the room. As it grew intenser and more radiant, I observed a sickening and corpse-like odor diffuse itself through the chamber, and despite my anxiety to witness this phenomenon undisturbed, I could with difficulty conquer the feeling of faintness which oppressed me.

      The luminous cloud now began to grow brighter and brighter as I gazed. The horrible odor of which I have spoken did not cease to oppress me, and gradually I could discover certain lines making themselves visible in the midst of this lambent radiance. These lines took the form of a human figure — a tall man, dressed in a long dressing-robe, with a pale countenance, burning eyes, and a very bold and prominent chin. At a glance I recognized the original of the picture of old Van Koeren that I had seen with Alice. My interest was now aroused to the highest point; I felt that I stood face to face with a spirit, and doubted not that I should learn the fate of the old man's mysteriously-concealed wealth.

      The spirit presented a very strange appearance. He himself was not luminous, except some tongues of fire that seemed to proceed from the tips of his fingers, but was completely surrounded by a thin gauze of light, so to speak, through which his outlines were visible. His head was bare, and his white hair fell in huge masses around his stern, saturnine face. As he moved on the floor, I distinctly heard a strange crackling sound, such as one hears when a substance has been overcharged with electricity. But the circumstance that seemed to me most incomprehensible connected with the apparition, was that Mr. Van Koeren held in both hands a curiously-painted flower-pot, out of which sprang a number of the most beautiful tulips in full blossom. He seemed very uneasy and agitated, and moved about the room as if in pain, frequently bending over the pot of tulips as if to inhale their odor, then holding it out to me, seemingly in the hope of attracting my attention to it. I was, I confess, very much puzzled. I knew that Mr. Van Koeren had in his lifetime devoted much of his leisure to the cultivation of flowers, importing from Holland the most expensive and rarest bulbs; but how this innocent fancy could trouble him after death, I could not imagine. I felt assured, however, that some important reason lay at the bottom of this spectral eccentricity, and determined to fathom it if I could.

      "What brings you here?" I asked audibly; directing mentally, however, at the same time, the question to the spirit with all the power of my will. He did not seem to hear me, but still kept moving uneasily about, with the crackling noise I mentioned, and holding the pot of tulips toward me.

      "It is evident," I said to myself, "that I am not sufficiently en rapport with this spirit in order for him to make himself understood by speech. He has, therefore, recourse to symbols. The pot of tulips is a symbol. But of what?"

      While reflecting on these things, I continued to gaze upon the spirit. While observing him attentively, he approached my bedside by a rapid movement, and laid one hand on my arm. The touch was icy cold, and pained me at the moment. Next morning my arm was swollen, and marked with a round blue spot. Then passing to my bedroom-door, the spirit opened it noisily and went out, shutting it behind him. Catching for a moment at the idea that I was the dupe of a trick, I jumped out of bed and ran to the door. It was locked, with the key on the inside, and a brass safety-bolt, which lay above the lock, shot safely home. All was as I had left it on going to bed. Yet I declare most solemnly, that as the ghost made his exit, I not alone saw the door open, but I saw the corridor outside, and distinctly observed a large picture of William of Orange that hung just opposite to my room. This to me was the most curious portion of the phenomena I had witnessed. Either the door had been opened by the ghost, and the resistance of physical obstacles overcome in some amazing manner — because in this case the bolts must have been replaced when the ghost was outside the door — or he must have had a sufficient magnetic rapport with my mind to impress upon it the belief that the door was opened, and also to conjure up in my brain the vision of the corridor and the picture, features that I would have seen if the door had been opened by any ordinary physical agency.

      The next morning at breakfast I suppose my manner must have betrayed me, for Jasper said to me, after staring at me for some time,

      "Why, Harry Escott, what's the matter with you? You look as if you had seen a ghost!"

      "So I have, Jasper."

      Jasper, of course, burst into a loud fit of laughter, and said he'd shave my head and give me a shower-bath.

      "Well, you may laugh," I answered; "but you shall see it to-night, Jasper."

      He became serious in a moment — I suppose there was something earnest in my manner that convinced him that my words were not idle — and asked me to explain. I described my interview as accurately as I could.

      "How did you know that it was old Van Koeren?" he asked.

      "Because I have seen his picture a hundred times with Alice," I answered, "and this apparition was as like it as it was possible for a ghost to be like a miniature."

      "You must not think I'm laughing at you, Harry," he continued, "but I wish you would answer this. We have all heard of ghosts — ghosts of men, women, children, dogs, horses, in fact every living animal; but hang me of ever I heard of the ghost of a flower-pot before."

      "My dear Jasper, you would have heard of such things if you had studied such branches of learning. All the phenomena I witnessed last night are supportable by well-authenticated facts. The cool wind has attended the appearance of more than one ghost, and Baron Reichenbach asserts that his patients, who you know are for the most part sensitive to apparitions, invariably feel this wind when a magnet is brought close to their bodies. With regard to the flower-pot about which you make so merry, it is to me the least wonderful portion of the apparitions. When a ghost is unable to find a person of sufficient receptivity, in order to communicate with him by speech, he is obliged to have recourse to symbols to express his wishes. These he either creates by some mysterious power out of the surrounding atmosphere, or he impresses, by magnetic force on the mind of the person he visits, the form of the symbol he is anxious to have represented. There is an instance mentioned by Jung Stilling of a student at Brunswick, who appeared to a professor of his college with a picture in his hands, which picture had a hole in it that the ghost thrust his head through. For a long time this symbol was a mystery; but the student was persevering, and appeared every night with his head through the picture, until at last it was discovered that, before he died, he had gotten some painted slides for a magic lantern from a shop-keeper in the town, which had not been paid for at his death; and when the debt had been discharged, he and his picture vanished forevermore. Now here was a symbol distinctly bearing on the question at issue. This poor student could find no better way of expressing his uneasiness at the debt for the painted slides than by thrusting his head through a picture. How he conjured up the picture I can not pretend to explain, but that it was used as a symbol is evident."

      "Then you think the flower-pot of old Van Koeren is a symbol?"

      "Most assuredly, the pot of tulips he held was intended to express that which he could not speak. I think it must have had some reference to his missing property, and it is our business to discover in what manner."

      "Let us go and dig up all the tulip beds," said Jasper, "who knows but he may have buried his money in one of them?"

      I grieve to say that I assented to Jasper's proposition, and on that eventful day every tulip in that quaint old garden was ruthlessly uprooted. The gorgeous macaws, and ragged parrots, and long-legged pheasants so cunningly formed by those brilliant flowers, were that day exterminated. Jasper and I had a regular battue amidst this floral preserve, and many a splendid bird fell before our unerring spades. We, however, dug in vain. No secret coffer turned up out of the deep mould of the flower-beds. We evidently were not on the right scent. Our researches for that day terminated, and Jasper and myself waited impatiently for the night.

      It was arranged that Jasper should sleep in my room. I had a small bed rigged up for him near my own, and I was to have the additional assistance of his senses in the investigation of the strange phenomena that we so confidently expected to appear.

      The night came. We retired to our respective couches, after carefully bolting the doors, and subjecting the entire apartment to the strictest scrutiny, rendering it totally impossible that a secret entrance should exist unknown to us. We then put out the lights and awaited the apparition.

      We did not remain in suspense long. About twenty minutes after we retired to bed Jasper called out,

      "Harry," said he, "I feel the cool wind!"

      "So do I," I answered, for at that moment a light breeze seemed to play across my temples.

      "Look, look, Harry!" continued Jasper in a tone of painful eagerness, "I see a light — there in the corner!"

      It was the phantom. As before, the luminous cloud appeared to gather in the room, growing more and more intense each minute. Presently the dark lines mapped themselves out, as it were, in the midst of this pale, radiant vapor, and there stood Mr. Van Koeren, ghastly and mournful as ever, with the pot of tulips in his hands.

      "Do you see it?" I asked Jasper.

      "My God! yes," said Jasper, in a low voice. "How terrible he looks!"

      "Can you speak to me, to-night?" I said, addressing the apparition, and again concentrating my will upon my question. "If so, unburden yourself. We will assist you, if we can."

      There was no reply. The ghost preserved the same sad, impassive countenance; he had heard me not. He seemed in great distress on this occasion, moving up and down, and holding out the pot of tulips imploringly toward me, each motion of his being accompanied by the crackling noise and the corpse-like odor. I felt sorely troubled myself to see this poor spirit torn by an endless grief; so anxious to communicate to me what lay on his soul, and yet debarred by some occult power from the privilege.

      "Why, Harry," cried Jasper after a silence, during which we both watched the motions of the ghost intently, "why, Harry, my boy, there are two of them!"

      Astonished by his words I looked around, and became immediately aware of the presence of a second luminous cloud, in the midst of which I could distinctly trace the figure of a pale but lovely woman. I needed no second glance to assure me that it was the unfortunate wife of Mr. Van Koeren.

      "It is his wife, Jasper," I replied; "I recognize her, as I have recognized her husband, by the portrait."

      "How sad she looks!" exclaimed Jasper in a low voice.

      She did indeed look sad. Her face, pale and mournful in its cast, did not, however, seem convulsed with sorrow, as was her husband's. She seemed to be oppressed with a calm grief, and gazed with a look of interest that was painful in its intensity, on Mr. Van Koeren. It struck me, from his air, that though she saw him, he did not see her. His whole attention was concentrated on the pot of tulips, while Mrs. Van Koeren, who floated at an elevation of about three feet from the floor, and thus overtopped her husband, seemed equally absorbed in the contemplation of his slightest movement. Occasionally she would turn her eyes on me, as if to call my attention to her companion, and then returning, gaze on him with a sad womanly, half-eager smile, that to me was inexpressibly mournful.

      There was something exceedingly touching in this strange sight. These two spirits so near, yet so distant. The sinful husband torn with grief and weighed down with some terrible secret, and so blinded by the grossness of his being as to be unable to see the wife-angel who was watching over him; while she, forgetting all her wrongs, and attracted to earth by perhaps the same human sympathies, watched from a greater spiritual height, and with a tender interest, the struggles of her suffering spouse.

      "By Jove!" exclaimed Jasper, jumping from his bed, "I know what it means now."

      "What does it mean?" I asked, as eager to know as he was to communicate.

      "Well, that flower-pot that the old chap is holding —" Jasper, I grieve to say, was rather profane.

      "Well! what of that flower-pot?"

      "Observe the pattern. It has two handles made of red snakes, whose tails twist round the top and form a rim. It contains tulips of three colors, yellow, red, and purple."

      "I see all that as well as you do. Let us have the solution."

      "Well, Harry, my boy! don't you remember that there is just such a flower-pot, tulips, snakes and all, carved on the queer old painted mantle-piece in the dining-room."

      "So there is!" and a gleam of hope shot across my brain, and my heart beat quicker.

      "Now, as sure as you are alive, Harry, the old fellow has concealed something important behind that mantle-piece."

      "Jasper, if ever I am Emperor of France, I will make you chief of police; your inductive reasoning is magnificent."

      Actuated by the same impulse, and without another word, we both sprang out of bed and lit a candle. The apparitions, if they remained, were no longer visible in the strong light. Hastily throwing on some clothes, we rushed down stairs to the dining-room, determined to have the old mantle-piece down, without loss of time. We had scarce entered the room when we felt the cool wind blowing on our faces.

      "Jasper," said I, "they are here!"

      "Well," answered Jasper, "that only confirms my suspicions that we are on the right track this time. Let us go to work. See! here's the pot of tulips."

      This pot of tulips occupied the centre of the mantle-piece, and served as a nucleus round which all the fantastic animals sculptured elsewhere might be said to gather. It was carved on a species of raised shield, or boss, of wood, that projected some inches beyond the plane of the remainder of the mantle-piece. The pot itself was painted a brick-color. The snakes were of bronze color, gilt, and the tulips — yellow, red, and purple were painted after nature with the most exquisite accuracy.

      For some time Jasper and myself tugged away at this projection without any avail. We were convinced that it was a movable panel of some kind, but yet were totally unable to move it. Suddenly it struck me that we had not yet twisted it. I immediately proceeded to apply all my strength, and after a few seconds of vigorous exertion, I had the satisfaction of finding it move slowly round. After giving it half a dozen turns, to my astonishment the long upper panel of the mantle-piece fell out toward us, apparently on concealed hinges, after the manner of the portion of escritoirs that is used for writing upon. Within were several square cavities sunk in the wall, and lined with wood, like the pigeon-holes of a desk. In one of these was a bundle of papers.

      We seized these papers with avidity, and hastily glanced over them. They proved to be documents vouching for property to the amount of nearly two hundred thousand dollars, invested in the name of Mr. Van Koeren in a certain firm at Bremen, who, no doubt, thought by this time that the money would remain unclaimed forever. The desires of these poor troubled spirits were accomplished. Justice to the child had been given through the instrumentality of the erring father.

      The formulas necessary to prove Alice and her mother sole heirs to Mr. Van Koeren's estate were briefly gone through, and the poor governess leaped suddenly from the task of teaching stupid children to the envied position of a great heiress. I had ample reason afterward for thinking that her heart did not change with her position.

      That Mr. Van Koeren became aware of his wife's innocence, just before he died, I have no doubt. How this was manifested, I can not of course say, but I think it highly probable that his poor wife herself was enabled at the critical moment of dissolution, when the link that binds body and soul together is attenuated to the last thread, to put herself en rapport with her unhappy husband. Hence his sudden starting up in his bed, his apparent conversation with some invisible being, and his fragmentary disclosures, too broken, however, to be comprehended.

      The question of apparitions has been so often discussed, that I feel no inclination to enter here upon the truth or fallacy of the ghostly theory. I myself believe in ghosts. Alice, my wife — for we are married, dear reader — believes in them firmly; and if it suited me to do so, I could overwhelm you with a scientific theory of my own on the subject, reconciling ghosts and natural phenomena. I will spare you, however, for I intend to deliver a lecture on the subject at Hope Chapel this winter, and if I disclosed my theory now, some one of our "gifted lecturers" would perhaps forestall me, and make "his arrangements for the season" on the strength of my ideas. Any one, however, who wishes to investigate this subject, will find an opportunity by addressing a note to Mr. Harry Escott, care of the publishers of this Magazine.